As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
(Mark 13:1-8)
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I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that the warnings Jesus gives his disciples about the future in today's reading from Mark's Gospel have an unfortunate resonance right now. Jesus talks about destruction and wars and various human tragedies that are going to occur over the course of time. Last week was a disheartening example of the sorts of things he may have been talking about. The week began with a ridiculous example of a few silly Christians - because there's no other word for it - proclaiming that there's a renewal of the so-called "war on Christmas" because - heaven forbid - Starbucks redesigned their Christmas coffee cups (which was surely what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of his followers being flogged.) But then a couple of things brought us crashing back to ugly reality. For some reason it didn't get much notice in the western media, but on Thursday, 43 people died and over 200 were wounded in a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon. I guess the media thought, "well. It's Beirut. It's Lebanon. It's the Middle East. These things happen." And some people still worried about Starbucks. And then - the very next day - came Paris. We paid attention to that. Wall to wall by the hour coverage. It was sickly reminiscent of 9/11 and New York City; perhaps not as much destruction and death and perhaps not quite so close to home, but shocking enough and close enough to bring forth a feeling of deja vu. And I don't know about you - but I found myself in need of some hope. How do you find hope in a crazy, violent world like this? Well, I guess you turn to Jesus.
Hope was at the centre of virtually everything that Jesus taught and if the Bible tells us that “perfect love casts out fear,” then it’s also valid to suggest that hope makes fear disappear. Generally speaking, when we’re afraid, what we fear is the future. Whatever we’re afraid of, it’s something that hasn’t happened; it’s something that might happen. Jesus addresses fear of the future in a variety of different contexts. In the Sermon on the Mount he told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow. That’s good advice, because some people get so caught up with worrying about tomorrow that they forget to live today! Jesus didn’t tell us to ignore either the future or its challenges. In fact, he discussed the future at length with his disciples in today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark. Here, Jesus looks ahead to the culmination of history; the fulfilment of God’s plan for the world’s redemption. “The end times” some people call them. On the surface, it doesn’t sound especially promising - and passages like this are often co-opted by so called “doomsday prophets” who like to predict the end of the world in ominous, threatening tones. And yet - wars, famines, persecutions and earthquakes - none of these things have ever been absent, so it’s not likely that Jesus was offering his disciples a sort of code for them to predict the end of the world, the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom or the pending collapse of human civilization (whether by nuclear war, terrorism or zombie plague.) I think Jesus was just saying that we have to be prepared for whatever might happen on any given day - in Ajax or Pickering, in New York or Ottawa, in Paris or in Beirut. And for Jesus, even the end was a thing of hope, not fear. Today, people speak of coping mechanisms - things they do to get themselves through stressful or frightening times. In today’s passage, Jesus told his disciples about three hoping mechanisms that I hope all of us might find valuable.
Jesus first offers a caution that his followers are not to become enchanted with human achievements. As this passage opens, the disciples are awestruck by the magnificence of the temple buildings in Jerusalem. “Look teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” The temple was built on a massive scale. It was the second temple. The temple built during Solomon’s reign had been destroyed centuries before. This one was built by Herod the Great about twenty years before Jesus was born. Herod’s plan was to build something that would match and even exceed the magnificence of Solomon’s table, and he succeeded. The Jewish historian Josephus described the stones as massive - 45 cubits by 45 cubits by 8 cubits, Josephus said. I confess that I’m not 100% sure how big a cubit is - but that sounds pretty big! There were 162 columns in Herod’s temple - they were each 50 feet high and had a circumference the equivalent of three men with outstretched arms. This temple was massive - anyone who saw it would assume that it was going to last forever, but actually it lasted for less than a hundred years. About 40 years after Jesus died, Herod’s temple was reduced to rubble by the Romans. Jesus understood the danger of placing your hopes in anything built by human hands - because no matter how huge, it’s going to be fragile. Sometimes Christians become enchanted with the potential for human achievement. We think we’re going to change the world - we think we’re going to create God’s Kingdom on earth, but the truth is that - while we should try hard to do the best we can - only God is going to create God’s Kingdom on earth. That, I think, was Jesus’ point - not that we shouldn’t be impressed with human achievement, and not that we shouldn’t strive to achieve more, but simply that we shouldn’t put our faith in human achievement to solve every problem. Our faith is placed in the one who continues to stand even as everything else fades away: Jesus himself - our ultimate hope, and our new beginning. Our faith has to be placed in God and not in ourselves, no matter how impressive we may sometimes think ourselves to be.
The second hoping mechanism Jesus offered was a reminder that we should keep our eyes fixed firmly on God’s Word. Jesus tells us that while we can’t take the word of God and use it to predict exact dates and times, we should pay attention to God’s Word. Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open, and to be especially prepared for whatever might come by truly knowing the word of God. We can discern between falsehood and truth by keeping our eyes fixed on what God has revealed - in Scripture and through Jesus. “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” How do false teachers lead people astray? There are two ways: they either tell people exactly what they want to hear, knowing that they’ll attract followers by doing that, or they take advantage of those who don’t know Scripture well enough to see the contradictions between what it says and what they teach. That's how ISIS manages to convince people that Allah - described repeatedly in the Koran as "the merciful" - actually thinks that the wholesale slaughter of innocent people is a good and holy thing. So Jesus teaches his followers to be attentive to God’s word. Don’t just believe what people tell you about God’s word - be attentive to God’s word yourself. Test everything anyone says about God’s word - test it not against your own likes and dislikes, not against your own wants or needs, not against your own understanding of right and wrong. Test what others say about God’s word by truly knowing God’s word. That’s the second hoping mechanism for any person of faith: knowing God’s word; being immersed in it; being captivated by it; always wanting to know it better. Because God is a god who gives hope, and if you truly know the word of God, you’ll always have hope and you'll always live in love.
The final hoping mechanism Jesus taught (maybe the most important for us today) was that while we should be alert to events around us, we shouldn’t be alarmed by events around us. People who get easily alarmed also give up easily, and they start to cower for safety - and they look for that safety in all the wrong places, so that they’re easily manipulated - sometimes by the doomsday preachers, sometimes by the government. Since the Paris attacks some have called him naive for saying it and suggest that he probably wishes he hadn't said it, but just hours before the attacks in Paris our new Defence Minister - Harjit Sajjan - said that while we should be prepared, we shouldn't fear ISIS. I hope he doesn't regret those words. I hope he clings to them. I hope we cling to them. Because living in fear isn't really living. And, of course, they're called "terrorists"for a reason. If you choose to live in fear - well, the terrorists win, no matter how many bombs we drop on them; no matter how many of them we kill. To be alert but not alarmed is to follow the example set by Peter, James, John and Andrew in today’s passage: they sat at the feet of Jesus and they learned all that they could learn from him. They asked questions, and they listened to his answers. And the answers of Jesus are always answers which give hope.
Today is a day of hope. Nothing should be able to take away Christian hope, because it comes from God. How can you see three babies get baptized and not have hope? Oliviah, Steven, Wylie - hope is embodied in those lives that have only just started. Who knows what they'll achieve? And real hope - abiding hope; hope that can never be defeated - was embodied in Jesus, who taught us three hoping mechanisms: to place our faith in God and not in our own abilities, to be knowledgeable about God’s word, and to be aware of but not alarmed by what happens around us. No matter what - no one needs to be without hope - and hope is what we as followers of Jesus offer to the world.
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